D.C.’s real estate market has some serious advantages when it comes to national rankings. In addition to a metropolitan area with a lot of inventory that keeps moving and local closing costs that are some of the lowest in the country, the District’s nature as a city with high-paying jobs tends to attract a lot of first-time homebuyers.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see that Washington continues to see the highest share of first-time homebuyers in the U.S., edging out Rhode Island (67 percent) and New York (65 percent) in a recent report on 2013 results from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. D.C.’s nation-leading 68 percent put its way ahead of the average state, as you can see in the chart below.

Given the factors cited by the report’s authors, none of this should be surprising.

States with the highest first-time homebuyer shares in recent years are: California, Nevada, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. These states are generally associated with high-cost metropolitan areas where job growth and worker mobility are likely to be higher and the share of first-time homebuyers in each of these states has exceeded 60 percent since 2011. In contrast, states with the lowest first-time homebuyer shares in recent years include: Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Vermont and Maine. Since 2011, shares in these states have been either at or below 50 percent, which is lower than the national share of about 56 percent. These states are generally associated with more non-urban areas. The share of first-time homebuyers in the remaining states has hovered around 50 to 60 percent in recent years.

And D.C. is a city – after all – set in the middle of a high-cost metro area. That means you can probably expect to see it stay on top in these for the foreseeable future.